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FOX SPORTS & IRACING
Chicago, Illinois
This PR campaign was part of a 10-week long class called FOX Sports University sponsored by FOX Sports. My class had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with FOX Sports employees and employees of the client, iRacing. My team produced the winning campaign as voted by the FOX Sports and iRacing professionals.
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For this campaign, we were asked to create a full PR campaign for FOX Sports and iRacing in order to drive tune-in to FOX NASCAR iRacing on FOX, FS1, and the FOX Sports App. FOX NASCAR iRacing crushed the viewing charts and was an instant hit. They had a unique opportunity to have live broadcasts on FOX Sports because of the lack of sports due to of COVID-19. They wanted to continue their momentum and gain more viewership for their upcoming season.
After taking into consideration the current and desired positionings for FOX Sports and iRacing, as well as their SWOT analysis, we dove into our research to gain more insights on NASCAR and iRacing at large. We conducted 2 surveys, 5 interviews, and extensive secondary research. Here is some of what we found.
After gaining these insights, my team decided to dive more into the Esports aspect of iRacing. A couple of my teammates attributed their love of professional sports to playing that respective video game. We thought that was an interesting parallel and we wanted to explore it more.
Once we analyzed the information from most of our primary and secondary research, we decided to conduct interviews with real NASCAR fans because our initial survey saw so few. Here is some of what we learned.
After this extensive research to gain a better understanding of the NASCAR, iRacing, and Esports communities, we decided to target a new audience. Seeing as the average viewer of FOX NASCAR iRacing was men, aged 56, who lived in the southeast, there was a great opportunity to engage with a newer, younger audience.
Here are some of the personalities that made up this new target demographic.
After consolidating our research and choosing a new target audience, we arrived at the following key insight.
This key insight drove all of our ideas. We knew that getting iRacing in the hands of the target would create new fans from a previously untapped market. With that in mind, we developed the following campaign.
The Chasing the Checkered Flag campaign mimicked the format of a typical sporting season in a very unique and fresh way.
For the iRacing Combine, we wanted to engage with the Esports community. Also, people would be able to get hands-on experience with iRacing by participating in various skills challenges.
We drafted mock posts in order to announce the release of #chasingthecheckeredflag and to show how we utilized social media to increase fan engagement.
For iRace on the Road, the main focus was to get iRacing in the hands of the target audience. By arriving at select college football and basketball games, we would do just that. This once again connected back to the key insight that playing the game would lead to increased fandom.
The Winner's Circle was the perfect way to give fans a "Super Bowl" experience tailored to iRacing and FOX Sports.
Through the campaign, we mentioned that events would be hosted by Barstool Sports and streamed on Caffeine. Here is why.
The following was the timeline of when all events would take place.
Here is how we chose to evaluate the success of the campaign.
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